How To React To The Google Ban

Google expects that you should make pages for users, not for search engines: “Don’t deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users,” they say, and Google goes on to list the following banned advice:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Avoid Keyword Stuffing – Adding random Keywords In Your Footer.
• Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

You can get your site back in to Google’s good graces if you follow some simple steps. It may require a complete revamp of your website and SEO techniques, but it is worth the effort.

• First, clean up your act. (Fix the Issues)
• Then send Google a very polite email where you acknowledge and describe what you (or your search engine marketing firm) have done.
• Tell Google that you have read their guidelines and that you will not anything like this again.
• If you hired an SEO firm that spammed on your behalf, release the firm’s name.
• Always Include full contact information.

Do apologize and make no excuses. Google will frequently reply to such polite requests and you may find some of your pages back in the index within a couple of weeks. However, it can take months before the search engine has spidered your complete site again.

The Google Ban Notice – How to get Google to tell you when you have crossed the line

It is in fact possible to get Google to inform you when they deem you have broken the rules.

Webmasters using Google’s Sitemap feature may possibly (we repeat: may) get an email from Google telling them when they have crossed the line.

Google’s Matt Cutts puts it this way:

(…) I think the ideal search engine would also tell legitimate site owners when they risk not doing well in Google. On the other hand, if the webspam team detects a spammer that is creating dozens or hundreds of sites with doorway pages followed by a sneaky redirect, there’s no reason that we’d want the spammer to realize that we’d caught those pages…”

So Google may try and tell you when they believe you have broken the rules. This is the kind of email you might expect:

No pages from your site are currently included in Google’s index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines. Please review our webmaster guidelines and modify your site so that it meets those guidelines. Once your site meets our guidelines, you can request reinclusion and we’ll evaluate your site.

If you find the issue and clean it up, then click on the “Submit a reinclusion request” and fill out the form.

Stay on top of the issue and be proactive in getting your website Re-indexed. Do not bug the spam team every day or every other day. They are very busy and will reply when necessary to your requests. Give it time, you made the mistakes and it is not Google’s fault that you were banned. It is yours or your SEO guys mistake.

Have you ever been banned by Google? How did you react? What did you do? Share your tips below by commenting so others can learn how to fix a Google Ban.